


Split Personality

by heartbeatslows



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Gen, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbeatslows/pseuds/heartbeatslows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because the Ghost Boy has told his hunters his identity doesn't mean they're inclined to believe him. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split Personality

“He’s ready,” Jack whispered. His voice was scarcely quieter than normal, but for the first time in a while, Maddie couldn’t see the laugh lines around his eyes. "Be safe, Mads. I’ll be right out here. Scream if you need me.“

Maddie nodded resolutely and slid an ectoweapon into one of the hidden compartments in her jumpsuit. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and walked into the cage with the Ghost Boy.

He sat on the bed, hands on a gaming device they’d tossed in with him so he wouldn’t make too much noise. It was the mobile version of Doom, a game Danny liked to play, but just because they played the same video games didn’t mean…

“Hey, Mom.”

“Don’t start with that,” she snapped, then took a deep breath and collected herself. The ghost just shook his head, irritated, not taking his eyes off the handheld.

Maddie ran a hand through her hair. She needed to start over. She smiled blandly at him, not quite placating, but civil. "Do you mind putting that away?“ she asked. "It’ll be easier to discuss this if I can see your eyes.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He pressed a button on the side of the game (he didn’t even stop to save his progress; that was certainly unlike Danny) and placed the game on the bed next to him.

Phantom lifted his head, and for the first time Maddie was close enough to see the whites of his eyes. They were threaded with green veins, with a lime-colored iris and shocking white pupils. They weren’t her Danny’s eyes. They were fluid, the shade of the iris constantly shifting, and worse, they glowed.

“What can I do for you, Mom?” Phantom asked. Maddie twitched, repulsed, but tried to remain cordial.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me that,” she said. "At least until we determine just what you are.“

Phantom’s eyes were flat. “Determine?” He sat with his hands pressed into the cot on either side, rigid arms supporting the weight that his shoulders couldn’t. “What more am I supposed to do? I already transformed in front of you, twice. You took fingernail, hair, blood, and ectoplasm samples. What more is it going to take–” His voice cracked, and he pressed his hands into the fabric on the cot. "You don’t even know what you’re looking for, do you?”

He was right. They’d analyzed the samples every way they knew how, and had drawn up a list of qualities of the ghost and the boy, but evidence for–or against–the Ghost Boy still eluded them.

“We’ll have results soon enough. We want to see if what you say corroborates.”

Phantom threw his hands in the air and stood up to pace. "Unbelievable. I’m being interrogated by my own parents.“

“I asked politely that you not say that,” Maddie said icily. Danny nodded, his eyes focused on the wall ahead, pointedly not looking her in the eye.

Maddie took a deep breath. She tried to remember the list of questions she and Jack had settled on, the interrogation questions. The ghost’s presence had startled them out of her, but she was a scientist. She would be composed.

“Maddie?”

Despite everything she’d said, hearing him call her “Maddie” was disconcerting, too. His voice was just like Danny’s in tone and inflection, but the pitch was off, as though she were hearing him through stereo, with a hollow-sounding echo just offset. Hearing herself called “Maddie,” in Danny’s voice, was…well.

“Yes?” she asked, businesslike.

“Can I change into human form for this?”

A ghostly tactic, an appeal to her human emotion. "I’d prefer that we conduct this in your Phantom form,“ she said primly. "It may affect our demeanors, and I would like to keep this professional.”

Phantom nodded, again not looking at her. "I thought as much,“ he murmured.

Maddie coughed, remembering her questions again. She couldn’t let emotion get to her.

"How did you come to–”

“You know,” Phantom interrupted, “if you ‘determine’ that I am actually Danny Fenton, all of this is going to be a really uncomfortable memory later.”

“All of what?”

Phantom gestured to the rest of the small room. Sterile and white, exactly one thousand cubic feet, each wall the same as every other. The door she’d come through was the only deviation from the uniformity, since she and Jack had rejected his request for the NASA and Dumpty Humpty posters that adorned Danny’s walls upstairs. The bed, actually a foldable cot, was against the wall opposite the door. A two-foot-tall, 3D-printed set of drawers sat next to it, with a lamp and a book sitting on it. A DC comic. Danny usually preferred Marvel, but Jack hadn’t known the difference when he’d gone to grab a few things for Phantom to do. The rest of the books were spread out on the floor. “To make the room look lived in,” Phantom had said the first day.

“All of this,” he repeated. "The septic specter prison. The interrogation. It’s cold in here at night, you know.“

"We couldn’t risk putting in a heater,” Maddie said without thinking. Phantom looked confused, and she explained, “You might have taken it apart and disabled the anti-ghost shield with it.”

Phantom threw his hands in the air. "I don’t even know how to do that!“ he shouted. "If I wanted to leave, I’d just turn human and walk out. But this is my house. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Don’t you have a lair in the Ghost Zone?” Maddie asked. Phantom balled up his fists, trying not to scream.

“I don’t live in the Ghost Zone! I live with you! I’m your son!” His voice rang around the room at twice the volume, like stereo distortion.

A dozen ectoguns descended from the ceiling, all of them pointing at Phantom. He just glared at them. His anger was strong enough that he didn’t have room to be afraid.

“Shoot me!” he screamed. "I don’t care anymore! Just get it over with!“

The guns loaded up, and Maddie knew Jack was waiting for her say-so.

She needed to breathe, needed to think. She didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe him. He was just another ghost, lying shamelessly to try to survive. That was how they all were.

She thought back to third grade, when her sister had lived overshadowed by a ghost for three months straight. She remembered discovering the ghost and calling it out, how it went into a fury that put her in the hospital for another three months. That was when she’d started taking martial arts lessons, and studying the supernatural.

The look on Alicia’s face when the Maddie’s makeshift dream catcher finally scared the ghost off was one of the clearest pictures in Maddie’s memory. Shaken, fearful, angry, broken. Lost. She couldn’t let the same happen to Danny. She just couldn’t.

Maddie snapped. "Listen here, ghost. I know what you’re doing. Don’t act as though I don’t. You’re trying to trick us, to get us to house you or work with you to fight those other ghosts. Our evidence shows that you have an obsession with the town of Amity Park. You want to rule it, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” Phantom shouted. "I want to protect Amity! Protect! I’ve never done anything to hurt this city!“

"Jack, the slideshow, please,” Maddie called. A TV screen lowered into the cubicle, and Jack flipped through images of Phantom destroying buildings with poorly targeted ectoblasts, endangering civilians and causing havoc, and ended with a clip of him holding a bag of money stolen from the town bank, destroying their security cameras with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Thanks, honey,” Maddie said, and the TV disappeared. She looked back at Phantom, arms crossed, and waited for a response.

He was quiet for a second, then gave half a chuckle. It may have been mirthless, but it was wrong for the situation and he knew it. Phantom must have given up all hope, or else he was stalling.

“Geez,” he joked, “if only I’d known there was a TV in here this whole time. Could have saved me some boredom over the last three weeks.“

"Don’t be impudent.” Maddie wasn’t going to allow herself to be sidetracked by this ghost. She counted off on her fingers as she spoke. “You have no evidence. We cannot act without evidence. The fact is, you can switch between ‘human and ghost forms’ as long as you want, but until you can prove definitively that you are our son, you will stay in this box.”

She watched Phantom’s eyes as she spoke, not allowing herself emotional connection beyond reading his emotions. She saw how they went from startled, to hollow, to downright disconsolate, but she kept speaking.

“We know our son’s whereabouts at every moment, and we’ve seen you fighting ghosts during school hours when the school records clearly state that he never left school. Danny’s never shown the least bit of interest in fighting ghosts. He always prefers to run when one comes near. You don’t have DNA, so we can’t prove anything either way, but my gut–that is, my intuition–tells me that you are not my son.”

For all the lapse in social convention a moment before, his expression was perfect now. Raw and heartbroken, it was as though she’d really told him he was being disowned. For two beats of her heart–badum, badum–his mournful look remained, but his resignation was quick, quick enough that Maddie could discredit it. Danny would have screamed and pleaded, she was sure; if their family meant anything to him, he would have fought more for it.

Instead, he just shook his head, put his palms up in defeat, and agreed.

“Okay,” Phantom said. "You’ve got me. Shame it took this long for you to say what you really thought, or I could have quit this game up a long time ago.“

Maddie didn’t know how to respond. After all the insistence, all the times he’d called her "Mom,” he was just giving up?

She fingered the gun at the edge of her belt as she spoke. "Leave my son’s body,“ she ordered, steel-voiced. And then we’ll destroy you where you stand for daring to pose as him, she thought.

Phantom nodded, palms still up, still keeping careful eye contact. It was a self-defense mechanism, keeping his eyes on the supposed threat. Maddie had seen it in a thousand ghosts before him. He smiled sardonically. "Promise not to shoot at me?”

Maddie remembered how it had looked when the ghost possessing Alicia left her body; it was as though it was branded on her mind. The ghost had simply floated upward and left, assuming its standard appearance as it rose. Alicia had been conscious, and shook her head, wondering what was going on, with no memory of the three months prior.

This time, though, there was a flash of light, and suddenly next to Phantom there lay a body. Totally still, clad in blue jeans and a white shirt.

“Danny,” Maddie exhaled, her voice a wrenched and half-repressed sob. She shot Phantom with a stunner and he dropped to the floor, where she shot him twice more for good measure as she raced across the room to reach her son.

His body was warm, save for his fingers and toes, and his heartbeat was regular. He wore exactly what she remembered seeing him in last, and his cheeks were as rosy as she remembered. He wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t hurt.

She held him in her arms, crying into his soft black hair, as Phantom writhed on the floor, hissing and shrieking at the electric shock. She didn’t care. She had Danny, the real Danny, in her arms now, and the whole ordeal could finally be put to rest.

“Mom?” Danny murmured, groggy.

Maddie pulled back, checking his eyes. They were exactly as she remembered them, bright and vibrant, if a little confused, but best of all, they were normal, human blue. She pulled him to her again, kissing him on the top of the head.

“Oh, Danny, I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. She expected him to push away, but he surprised her by letting her hug and fuss over him.

She hadn’t realized Phantom’s screams had stopped until the door slammed open.

“Dad,” said Danny.

“Jack,” said Phantom.

Jack shot Phantom carelessly with a bazooka, throwing him against the wall. Maddie heard the crunch as Phantom’s biologically unnecessary bones broke, but he didn’t scream this time. All the sound he let escape was a pitiful moan, and he lay in a heap against the wall until the ghost shield pushed him back toward the center of the room.

Phantom was second priority to Jack at the moment, however eager he’d been to shoot him. He had Danny in his arms, squeezing him so tightly that the boy began to sputter. Maddie realized her son was staring white-faced at Phantom, but she couldn’t tell whether his expression edged closer toward resent or compassion.

Maddie stood, facing Phantom’s fallen form, and waved a hand at Jack to get his attention.

“Huh? Oh, right. Sorry, son, hugs are going to have to wait!”

Jack lifted the bazooka and stood behind Maddie, whose ectogun was already pointed at the ghost.

The phantom looked up. Maddie could see its eyes as what they were now, without a hint of remorse, because now she knew for certain who the monster was. As it spit glowing ectoplasm to the clean tile, holding a hand to its torn-up stomach, she watched, secure in the knowledge that its feelings were illusory, fragmented, and fake, and that her next actions wouldn’t matter.

“It was foolish of you to give yourself up,” she said, loading the ectoweapon. "Especially while we have you trapped.“

Its eyes burned, and she saw the liquid irises stir themselves into a storm, but it didn’t attack. There was none of the fabled bolts of ectoplasm, no icy blasts, no supersonic screams. Just anger, dipped in malice and spiced with hatred.

She didn’t care.

"I hope you’re happy,” it hissed. "Now your son knows how much you truly care about him. Now your son knows he can be safe with you.“

Its face was pale with the lost ectoplasm, and the successive hits had turned its corporeal into something like a smeared painting of what it should have been. Its legs were pressed together, unsure of whether they were solid or wisps. Its stomach was scratched and scarred, the jumpsuit’s missing patches looking like they’d been sliced straight through. Its face had always had a humanoid base color with a green aura painted over it, but it had lost some of its color, and its skin was so white under the aura that it was as though the ghost was wholly green. It had never looked more spectral. It had never looked so much like a ghost.

Maddie fired the weapon.

The ghost disappeared before the shot hit, and when Maddie sent Jack to do a frantic check of the room’s ectoplasmic signature, only residue was left. She found traces of Phantom’s lingering presence in the stains on the floor, charred handprints on the bed, and a fuzzy haze over Danny, all of which she privately resolved to scrub away as soon as possible.

To Danny, she was more gentle. "It’ll wear off,” Maddie assured him, hugging him tight.

He shied away, to her surprise. Had it been the way she handled the ghost? Danny may not have known that he’d been overshadowed, and he sometimes found it hard to remember that they weren’t really people…Ah. It wasn’t her he skirted from but the ectoweapon sitting on her hip.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie. Is it cold?” she asked.

Danny looked more tired than he’d been when he woke up, and Maddie wondered what had changed in less than a minute. His heavy lids made the bags under his eyes look even worse, and she lamented the time he’d spent under Phantom’s influence. Surely it had been the ghost who’d turned her son so haggard.

Still, under her scrutiny, he attempted a smile.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said. "It's…cold.“

She put it down on the bed, next to the ghost-burned cloth, and kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she crooned. “You’re safe here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr as a Christmas Truce gift for kinqdanny.tumblr.com, look on thefront-page.tumblr.com for the rest of my fanfiction/original work


End file.
